Toyota GR Cars Won’t Go Electric Any Time Soon

It’s easy to get a bit disheartened as a car enthusiast at the moment, as attainable performance cars disappear left, right and centre. Once again, though, Toyota is offering up a shining beacon of hope.

Its GR range of performance models have been some of our very favourite cars of recent years, and that looks like it’ll continue for some time. Addressing Australian media, including Carsales, earlier this week, Toyota Australia’s sales, marketing and franchise manager Sean Hanley said:

“While we’re focused on future electrification for the rest of our model line-up, we plan to keep GR about the sounds, about the smells and the feel of a combustion engine – that snap, crackle and pop we all love so much.

“Combustion engines and manual transmissions will be around for a long, long time,” he continued.

This statement will likely be met with cheers of joy by those living in places that haven’t yet announced plans to phase out combustion engines, and a tinge of sadness in other places. The UK, for instance, currently plans to ban the sale of pure combustion cars by 2030, with only EVs and some unconfirmed forms of hybrids allowed thereafter.

There is hope for these places, though, providing legislators can make exceptions for alternative solutions. Hanley went on to state that future GR cars may not necessarily be powered by fossil fuels, and we know Toyota is deeply involved with research into both synthetic fuels and hydrogen-fuelled combustion engines.

As for what the immediate future holds for the GR range, there’s plenty to get excited about: revivals of the Celica and MR2, as well as a flagship supercar to serve as the basis for a new GT3 racer, are almost certainly happening, and next-gen versions of the Supra and GR86 seem likely too. It’s even more exciting to think that most of these cars will come not only with petrol power, but with three pedals too.